Jerry Garcia Quotes

It would be important for someone to understand how much our music means to us. Our music comes first right now and hopefully for ever.

I'll tell you one thing: I will always play the sh** out of my guitar.

My music has always been important regardless of other projects.

My goal is to be one with the music. I just dedicate my whole life to this art.

Music is one of the noblest callings I can think of. It's the highest of all the art forms to me. For example, if my kid said to me, 'I want to give it all up,' whatever it is that they're doing, 'and I want to take my saxophone and go out,' I would say, 'May God go with you. This is a great and noble thing that you're doing.'

I'd rather people interpret the songs and get whatever they can out of them instead of thinking about me crying in a room with a guitar.

Technically, I'm not a guitar player, all I play is truth and emotion.

I got my first real six string, bought it at the five and dime, played it 'til my fingers bled.

I think only of my painting, and if I were to drop it, I think I'd go crazy.

Writing music and playing guitar was really what I wanted to do forever.

My guitar is like my best friend. My guitar can get me through anything. If I can sit down and write an amazing song with my guitar about what's going on in life, then that's the greatest therapy for me.

You know when I think about what I'm doing - what I'm doing and the way I'm doing it is more important to me than any amount of money or anything like that because it's my artistic work.

I didn't study the piano - the piano studied me.

The very day I purchased it, I christened my guitar as my monophonic symphony, six string orchestra.

To me a guitar is kind of like a woman. You don't know why you like 'em but you do.

For my 21st birthday, I think my mother wanted to give me a watch, or something, you know, some kind of traditional thing. And I said, "Well, if you're going to buy me something, there's a Gibson Melody Maker guitar advertised in the paper for 60 dollars. Do you think I could have that?" And I think that she was very disappointed that at 21 I was still messing around with that sort of thing. She didn't understand what it was all about. But now she understands it, and likes it.

The music is all we care about -- so if that's bad, then we're bad.

I think so much of a director's job is just to convince you that what you're doing is worthwhile. "Yes, this does mean something, we're not just messing around." Even though at the end of the day it's a film. But at the time it's something else. I don't feel like I'm making a film, I'm confronting things in myself. I don't know what it is. So if someone is enthusiastic enough to convince you that it's important it's kind of magical.

Playing acoustic guitar is like having sex with your clothes on. I mean you know how to do it, but it’s more difficult.

I think Grace [Dunham] and I are always working from a personal place, and the fact that these were issues that we'd been talking about in our own families really clicked, but also Jason's [Benjamin] passion about it and his clear sense that this was going to be something emotional and remarkable to watch. It was very hard not get excited about it and want to help in any way we could.

When the intellectual part of guitar playing overrides the spiritual, you don't get to extreme heights.

I think I came alive when I started photography.

I'm really very embarrassed about my guitar playing, in one way, because it's very poor. I can never move but I can make a guitar speak.

There's actually a disdain for the conversation about audience in the art world. Artist to artist, if you say, "What do you think about audience?" they would probably say, "I don't think about audience, I only think about my work," yet the audience is such an important part.

It is not right for painters to think that painting is like prostitution, that 'first you do it for love, then you do it for others, and finally you do it for money.